Re: [PATCH v2] doc: clarify that "git bisect" accepts one or more good commits

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 24, 2017, 13:27 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqh8tjn6x4.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.21.1711240351170.30318@localhost.localdomain>

"Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@crashcourse.ca> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

>   in this sense, i don't think "indicate" and "identify" are
> completely interchangeable. in my mind, the word "identify" does
> nothing more than, you know, point at something and say, "that one,
> that's the one i'm talking about;" it goes no further than that.
>
>   on the other hand, the word "indicate" (in my mind) implies that
> you're about to provide some *property* or *quality* of something, and
> you do exactly that in the earlier quote:

I do not think the two words have different connotations, so we are in agreement. You do not necessarily need a property in mind when you "identify" a commit. You could just "identify" this and that commits to yourself, to keep them in mind. You _also_ can have a property in mind and "identify" this commit as a good one, and that commit as a bad one.

But identifying a commit as bad (or another one as good) alone to yourself does not get anything started. In order to advance the bisection process, you need to tell the "git bisect" machinery that "this commit is good", "that commit is bad", etc. I would think "indicate" is a verb with better connotation than "identify" for describing that action. You indicate something *to* *somebody, and in this case you indicate that this commit is good and that commit is bad to git.